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Seen from a Citroen team perspective it would make sense to use teammember Loeb as asfalt mentor for Mads.
The car is made for Loeb and his driving style, and Mads has said that he will adapt to the car, since he knows the car is top notch.

The Norwegian series does not contain any asfalt rounds, so they are a bit handicapped, and not trusting the tyres 100%. That require systematic training, starting from a low level, even for top drivers!

The car is made for his driving style, and Mads has said that he will adapt to the car, since he knows the car is top notch.

Can you be even more contradictory? His relatively poor performance so far this year proves that the car is NOT made for his driving style. In Germany the car looked really soft, the outer dampers of the car were plunging in the corners... You can't say a car is made for someone's driving style, especially with a WRC car. Simply because you can't really define the standard of what the car (DS3 WRC) is. And if you define "standard" as being the setup Loeb was driving, I think that's pretty much what Meeke is using now (at least it looked very similar in both Finland and Germany). It's quite strange what's going on with Mads. A few years ago, in his last privateer-year, I thought he could be the next man to beat Ogier, he was doing very good events, stage-times were very close to the top-crews, and he was extremely consistent at the same time. But now, he looks nowhere near it...

From Mads missing the spirit or something which is in Tanak, Neuville... Out of one snow rally and maybe one gravel rally not much to remember in the past and don't think he is capable to develop much. He can be (maybe he is already)"Hirvonen like" driver but not realy a winning type.

Can you be even more contradictory? His relatively poor performance so far this year proves that the car is NOT made for his driving style.

Looks like he meant Loeb.
Anyway concerning Ostberg he seem to make some progress with the car on gravel events, but not enough, always something happened t him during his learning. Perhaps the approach is not that good.

A few years ago, in his last privateer-year, I thought he could be the next man to beat Ogier, he was doing very good events, stage-times were very close to the top-crews, and he was extremely consistent at the same time. But now, he looks nowhere near it...

During 2012 we were judging him as a privateer, when he never tried to push the big boys. He was always the best of the rest, and back then we had 4 factory cars, now 8. Probably when trying to step up a gear he lost his way a bit and a little bit his mojo, especially after the first half of 2013 when one problem was coming after another.
I believe Mads lacks the ability to properly setup the car, a lot of times he complains about the car's behaviour but never really knows what is wrong with it. It will be nice to see him progress and challenge Latvala, Ogier but I doubt it will happen

Can you be even more contradictory? His relatively poor performance so far this year proves that the car is NOT made for his driving style. In Germany the car looked really soft, the outer dampers of the car were plunging in the corners... You can't say a car is made for someone's driving style, especially with a WRC car. Simply because you can't really define the standard of what the car (DS3 WRC) is. And if you define "standard" as being the setup Loeb was driving, I think that's pretty much what Meeke is using now (at least it looked very similar in both Finland and Germany). It's quite strange what's going on with Mads. A few years ago, in his last privateer-year, I thought he could be the next man to beat Ogier, he was doing very good events, stage-times were very close to the top-crews, and he was extremely consistent at the same time. But now, he looks nowhere near it...

Meeke is using his own set-up on the car. Sure maybe similar to Loeb but his own specific requirements. He has helped Loeb in the past. Some years ago Loeb had difficulty in finding a good set-up for his C4/DS3 (can't recall which) in PET for Greece, Meeke, as test driver, sorted it out for him.

During 2012 we were judging him as a privateer, when he never tried to push the big boys. He was always the best of the rest, and back then we had 4 factory cars, now 8. Probably when trying to step up a gear he lost his way a bit and a little bit his mojo, especially after the first half of 2013 when one problem was coming after another.
I believe Mads lacks the ability to properly setup the car, a lot of times he complains about the car's behaviour but never really knows what is wrong with it. It will be nice to see him progress and challenge Latvala, Ogier but I doubt it will happen

Interesting comment.

The systematic complaining about setup once the rally has started could be another hint that the notes are not up to par.

If Mads drives the car to the limit on tests (where he knows the road by heart) and sets the car up for that particular level of attack, that is one thing.

Then during the rally if he lacks confidence with notes and therefore there's not enough commitment, that car's setup is going to give him feedback like : understeer, too hard suspension, precision problem with steering, etc.

His engineers, if they are reading this...lol...could tell us if that's indeed the sort of talk they hear from him.

If the notes are indeed his problem, it would mean the ability to set-up the car is no issue in his case.

I'd like to analyze his notes a bit and compare to Loeb's which I understand quite well. If any Norwegian forumer could help out it would be great!

Loeb had for example:

1. distances between every corner unless really unuseful.

2. A corner system based on the shape of corners in degrees: ie. "droite 140" (meant a 140 degree corner) It's a typical french system which came from the good old days when they had scotch tape marks on the steering wheels, in recce, they would turn the wheel and get a quick measure by eye of how pronounced the corner was.

"The car is made for his driving style, and Mads has said that he will adapt to the car, since he knows the car is top notch".Can you be even more contradictory? His relatively poor performance so far this year proves that the car is NOT made for his driving style. .

I see your point, but "His" was pointing back to Loeb, and not Østberg. To avoid confusion I have edited my post :-)

7. "et" or "sur": "et" (and) is used to go from right to left or vice versa. "sur" is used to go from left into left o right into right.

...

and there's lots of fine details like that which make it all very precise.

Little things like "et" or "sur" seem trivial but are, for example, additional clues for him because if he would for example hear his co-driver say "droite 110 et droite 120" he would immediately lift off the gas because he would know right away there is a mistake in the notes...

Thanks for this interesting post Anthony. But are you sure you didn't mix up et/and and sur/on, or does Loeb really use it that way? From the systems I know, "and" is always used for two following corners in the same direction, while "on" is used for a changing direction, telling the driver to adjust his line in the exit of the first one in order to take the second corner quicker. The scotch tape on steering wheels of recce cars is still a common sight in France by the way. Especially on French gravel events, where only one run of recce is allowed, with the rally-car itself (this is done in order to give equal chances to all competitors, as not everyone can afford a recce-car for gravel).

Anyway back to Mads Ostberg, I don't think it's the notes that were that bad in Germany. The only visible difference between his car is that you could see it "rolling over" more than the others. Especially in one combination of a long left (3rd gear) into right (3rd gear) this was very visible. I'm not an expert at all, but it looked as if the ARB's were much softer than those of other drivers.